3. Malone
THREE
I shouldn’t play like this, but it’s too fucking delicious not to.
On the edge, touching her, taunting her.
Of course, the risk’s minimal. I’ve got what she wants, and the beautiful thing here is she doesn’t even know what it is she wants.
Apart from someone to help her dear old cocksucker dad.
She’s still standing, staring at me. Eric, the bartender, is trying not to pay attention. I happen to own this bar; it’s a slice of whatever I need it to be on occasion, but mostly it’s just a place where I come and drink. Other Knights come here when they’re using the property currently known as Orchid Lane, but I’m not sure if any of them know this place is mine.
I don’t hide it; I just don’t advertise the fact. It’s not important real estate.
There’s nothing here that screams Malone West. Anything with my actual name is high-end, on point with the well-heeled or rich.
But Rafe’s serves its purpose.
I let the beats play out silently between me and Scarlett.
She stares at me, her eyes an interesting gold-flecked amber, and the only makeup she’s wearing is the red lipstick on her mouth. Maybe a touch of mascara. But her skin’s clear and fresh. And she’s younger than her outfit suggests.
I think she’s innocent to a point, even though her pulse leaped and hammered when I touched the warm silk of her skin earlier.
“Sit,” I say, rubbing the tips of my fingers together like I can still feel her flesh on them and don’t want that sensation to dissipate.
She doesn’t. A long lock of her black hair curls down over her left breast. Her eyes are on me, full of anger, disdain, and the faintest hint of thinly veiled desire.
I know exactly what I look like, even in this expensive, flashy suit. Even with the rings.
“Fucking sit or I’ll get up and walk.”
“You’re JM?”
“James Malone, yes. And you’re Scarlett Hanlon. I expected your father.”
She swallows and slowly lowers herself, this time perching on the end of her chair. I wasn’t actually expecting him. His brother Grant is the one who reached out, sent a private email through the proper channels I’ve set up for JM.
Not that I’ve responded. If this was one of my aboveboard personas, Grant Hanlon would have tried to make an appointment through my receptionist. And Scarlett would have turned up, looking for me at my office or arranged an accidental meeting at some social engagement.
I guess the rules are the same.
But getting hold of JM isn’t as easy as harassing some receptionist for an appointment, and in this role, I don’t go anywhere close to someone as fresh-faced and innocent as Scarlett. I’m guessing she’s not the most experienced or she wouldn’t have walked into the sex club… either that, or there are other threats I’m not responsible for that are looming.
I wait, letting time stretch out. I flick a glance at Eric and hold up two fingers.
She doesn’t squirm, which I’m pretty fucking sure she’s doing internally, and she doesn’t glance at the door. She just keeps her lovely eyes on me. Which, I have to hand it to her, is ballsy.
Innocent doesn’t mean ignorant, and if she turned up at Orchid Lane, Scarlett’s got a damn clear idea of what JM does.
In another life, I could like her.
Pity I know who her father is.
All that corruption simmering below his respectable surface.
But I push those toxic thoughts away because getting angry isn’t going to do me any good here.
“Anything else?” Eric asks, depositing two more whiskeys on the bar.
I turn from her. “You can take her wine.”
“I want the wine,” she says.
“Too fucking bad.”
Eric does as I ask.
Her eyes narrow and her anger and annoyance is right there, dark and hot, for anyone to see.
“Your father didn’t have the balls to come to me himself.” I ask softly, “Or are you meant to be an offering? Sweet and tender meat in a red dress?”
Her eyes widen with shock. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”
Interesting. I’ve kept the threats broad and lacking in direction. There’s no specific accusation. The attacks on the family have been orchestrated by Knights and those we trust enough to hire on a regular basis.
It’s that knife-edge balance I want.
Hanlon Shipping is mostly on the up-and-up. But the corrupt soft center, those illegal jobs they do, are what I’m interested in. Not the jobs per se, but the fact they do them. And I’ve got enough on who they ship things for, both cross-dock and on the seas. The land shipping is often overlooked by so many and it’s integral.
But I’m also not looking to point fingers at anyone. Just create unrest, a fictional villain. In this case the “who” doesn’t matter, just as long as I can slide into the family and win their trust.
That’s when I’ll find the hidden client list.
If it was me, I’d have that fucking list split up and coded so you’d need a key to put the pieces together. The client, UR Fantasies, wants information on a competitor. But the list and the client don’t really interest me, apart from giving me the opportunity to play out my revenge fantasies on someone else’s dime.
And inside a game.
Poor little Scarlett’s the prize, the key, and the sacrifice.
But Daddy must be more frightened than I thought, and that makes me wonder, at least a little, about what might be on the list that even the Knights don’t suspect.
“If you’re going to ignore me, then I’ll call your receptionist and make an appointment…” Scarlett stops, her low, melodious voice trailing off. “Do you have an office?”
I slowly smile.
“What do you do, anyway?” She bites her lip, frowning. “I know you run that place, and you’re not…” She stops again. Swallows. “You can help…”
She means I’m not mafia. She’s trying to avoid the word criminal. Because she knows that’s what James Malone is. A sleazy crime lord with the power to protect.
“Help with what?” I ask, aware of the slightest shift of her thighs on the chair, the way her fingers stay flat on the edge of the bar, the way they turn waxy white at the edges because she’s fighting herself not to clench.
“You know.”
“Enlighten me.”
She swallows again and grabs her drink and downs it, trying not to cough. I have to say I don’t need to fucking like her to respect a woman who’ll treat excellent single malt like she has zero fucks to give when we both know she’s got so, so many.
Again, the glance of burning dislike comes my way, the one that holds unwanted desire.
Desire she thinks she’s hidden. But I’m excellent at reading that, feeling the change in the air when a woman wants. She doesn’t have to like me. It’s that physical pull, the lick of want that’s almost knee-jerk.
And the thing is that unwanted little knee-jerk is perfection to a man like me.
It holds volumes.
With that, I can wrap a woman up, right before I tear her down to the bone and have her coming back for more.
Have her doing exactly what I want.
I shift my smile into an approximation of softness. The hunter setting a trap and lying in wait.
“I tried to look you up,” she says. “But there’s nothing much about you.”
Try nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve peppered my name as sparingly as pure saffron threads. Tiny things that perfume her interest and nothing more than a hint of something she can’t untangle.
“There’s nothing overt about your father, either.”
Her frown’s laced with shock. “Because he runs a shipping company. It’s not even that big.”
“But… it’s pivotal.”
“What are you saying? He’s dirty?” Scarlett presses her lips together and she shakes her head. “I don’t think he knows what he ships. There’s… discretion, but…”
“And that isn’t suspicious?”
She’s silent for a beat and I can almost hear the snap, right before she stands. “I’ll find someone else.”
“Whatever you want, sweet thing.”
I down my drink, throw down a hundo, and walk out the door.
The night air is cool but refreshing, and this part of the avenue is quiet for Manhattan. I lean against the wall, under the broken streetlamp and in the shadow of the tree near the gutter. I grab a cigarette from the case in my pocket, and drag the sweet, clove-laden special blend into my lungs when the door opens and shuts to the bar.
I don’t need to look to know who it is.
The air shifts. Sings.
And that bewitching, complex scent of bright spice and fresh greens, so earthy and seductive, lights up around me.
On Scarlett, it morphs into something bordering erotic.
“If you want to know who I am, then you’ll have to ask point-blank.”
“Are you a criminal?”
“Wrong question. My businesses are varied, like my interests.” I take another drag. “If you’re asking whether I can protect your family, then yes, I can do that. I can also take out the threat. If I’m going to do that, it’s a different set of questions.”
She’s silent as a car zooms by and heels click on the pavement behind us. Then she says, “So you’re a pervert who runs a sex den?”
“I provide a service to people, Scarlett.”
“How—”
“I make it my business to know what’s going on everywhere. And I’m guessing you don’t know shit about me because your father panicked and sent you in to help before telling you who I actually am and why he needs me so badly.”
“You’re such a piece of shit.”
We stare at each other as I take another drag. “Maybe, but from what I’ve seen, someone’s out to get your family. Your father.”
“I have an uncle, too.”
I nod. “Let’s say both, then. You’re here looking for a way to save their asses.”
“If you can help, I… your details were on Uncle Grant’s desk, and I thought it might help if I came to speak to you first.”
“To tempt me?”
Her eyes widen. “No?—”
“Pity.”
I drop the cigarette, crush it into the pavement with my shoe, and then I move. Fast. With one swift motion, I have her pinned between me and the brick wall before she knows what’s happened.
“How about this,” I say, running my mouth against the side of her throat, pausing at the hard, wild beat of her pulse. “I might help, if I feel like it. After I dig into it.”
“Y-you said?—”
“I stay on top of everything going on, Scarlett. That’s different than digging in, don’t you think?”
Pushing my knee between her thighs is easier than I thought. What I want to do is press right into her soft heat, slide my fingers between her thighs, under the dress to see if she’s getting wet at my not-so-subtle innuendo.
She smells even better when my nose grazes her skin. If it’s perfume, then it’s fucking expensive because she just smells good everywhere, from the base of the side of her neck, right up to her ear. Her fucking hair smells like goddamn gardenias, too. I bet if I sniffed every inch of her, she’d smell like that.
Fuck, what’s it like between her legs, at her pussy? Gardenias and wild sex pheromones.
She may not know it yet, but I’m going to find out.
And she hasn’t stopped me, either.
I lift my head, our lips a quarter of an inch apart. There she smells like smoke and sweet scotch. And still the fucking gardenias.
“If you’re not going to help, then I’ll go,” she says, voice thick.
I run my tongue over the curve of her bottom lip, and she gasps, offering me entry into the hot, wet depths that I really fucking want to take. Instead, I slide a hand through her heavy hair that’s like silk between my fingers and stare at her.
“Never said I wouldn’t. Just that I might need some convincing.”
She licks her lips and raises her head like an unconscious offering.
“What’ll it take?” she asks. “I have money, a lot?—”
I bite back my smile. “I don’t want your fucking money. I’ve got plenty of my own.”
Scarlett takes a shaky breath and it teases my lips as she breathes out. “You’re not going to help out of the goodness of your heart.”
“I don’t have a fucking heart, or goodness, but I don’t do gratis. In life, there’s always a price. Sometimes steeper than others. And this might be the steepest.”
“How much?”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then what?” she asks, her hips moving and fuck, she’s rubbing her hot cunt against me. It’s so subtle, I’m not even sure she realizes what she’s doing.
This time I smile and let her go. I turn away and start walking down the street. With a nod to the black town car waiting a few feet away, it pulls out and stops at the curb in front of me.
“Wait.”
My hand pauses on the door handle.
“M-Malone?—”
“If I decide to help,” I say, not turning back. “I’ll be in touch.”
And then I get in the car.
I settle against the leather back seat and pull out my phone as we drive away.
I give her two days before she comes back around, desperate for whatever I’ll give. She’s smart, she’ll find a way.
I hope she’ll turn up at Orchid.
Still, I’m going to stack things in my favor.
I stab a phone number into my screen.
“It’s Malone. I’m moving things up.”
Shit’s about to hit the fan. My way.
My own special brand of chaos.